As global competition increases and supply chains become shorter, businesses are being forced to find new ways to increase plant performance while simultaneously reducing costs. Complexity of the business adds to the costs, and one area of significant complexity for manufacturing businesses is plant maintenance. In addition to adding complexity, maintenance can make up anywhere from 5-40% of the total costs of production. While maintenance is critical to the business outcome, it is often regarded as a necessary evil, and as a result it has been difficult to achieve sustained improvement in performance from an in-house maintenance group without intense management effort that detracts from the core business process.
For complete plants or, for example, production lines, it is known to provide (under classic maintenance contracts) fixed prices for a qualified status of the production means. The qualified availability is determined by the customer on the basis of his experience (which availability he must have).
Furthermore, bonus/penalty maintenance service is known; an availability variable is thereby determined (90%, 95%, 98%, 100%). If a better availability or 100% is reached, a bonus is paid; if less is reached, there is a penalty incurred.
According to the prior art, the following maintenance services, for example, are being done for the customer: Personnel, repair service/exchange service, partially including stock keeping, software update or suchlike.
The previously described prior art is not the best for the customer. The customer needs the financially, organizationally and technically best solution.